


open your heart, darling, let me see the blood and rot

by battyboy



Series: The Wild Ones AKA The Starky Bunch [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Coffee, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gregor Clegane can rot in hell :), Psychological Trauma, Relationship Discussions, Sandor is a grumpy old man, Sansa is a sweet but immature gal trying her best, fluff that hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 00:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11909532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battyboy/pseuds/battyboy
Summary: "I’ll tell you the damn story. If you’re going to be sticking around, if we’re going to move across the damned country together, then you should know it.”In which Sandor has some doubts, Sansa assuages said doubts, and Sandor tells her a story he's never told anyone before: the story of his scars.





	open your heart, darling, let me see the blood and rot

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! The Wild Ones AKA the Starky Bunch will now become a series! We'll see Arya/Jaqen and where that hell train is going. We'll see Theon making Poor Choices! Catelyn wondering how the hell all her children are being so gross!!

Sansa sat in Mr. Clegane’s Vietnam War class on a slow Wednesday afternoon. It was the last period of the day. Usually, students would’ve been eager and antsy to leave, but something about the cold autumn day had done a good job of lulling them into interest. The rain gently tapped the windows, a comforting background cadence to the rumble of Mr. Clegane’s lecture. She wasn’t listening at all, but watching the shape of his mouth. Thin lips, a few days of scruff, slightly pointed canines. She’d memorized that mouth, seen it snarl and shout, kiss and praise.

She watched his scars stretch and pull with the changes in his facial expression. The mottled skin from an accident so horrific they’d never even discussed it. His hair, still stringy and slow-growing, was pulled back in a ponytail. He was so devastatingly handsome that sometimes she just couldn’t stand it.

“Sansa.”

She jerked to attention, eyes wide. Sandor wanted something. “Um, pardon?” At that moment, the radiator that lined the walls began to whistle and clank.

“I asked you if you consider it honorable or not?”

“ _It_ , sir?” He liked it when she called him sir, sometimes. Maybe that would cool his growing irritation. The corner of his mouth twitched just slightly, a smirk. Her gut clenched hopefully.

“Draft dodging!” Sandor barked. “Pay attention, Ms. Stark!”

“Draft dodging!” she repeated dumbly. “Um, dodging the draft...I guess. I guess there’s some honor in it, depending on what side you’re on.”   

“Explain!” he barked again.

“Um, by refusing to participate in a really cruel and unnecessary war, you could be saving lives. And I guess educating people by bringing attention to it. And -- and _making_ the government listen to you. By taking some kind of action. Or...lack...thereof. Or something.” It was a floundering answer at best. A ton of separate ideas mashed into one barely intelligent statement.  

“Hm,” Sandor grunted. He glowered at her for a moment and moved onto the next student. As she watched him interrogate the poor girl about the ethics of the phrase “dissent is patriotic” she wheezed out a sigh of relief.  He was a hard-ass to his students, never letting a surface answer go unquestioned. He would often analyze kids’ answers until the poor student was so turned around, they couldn’t remember what they’d said in the first place. It was almost like he got a kick out of fucking with his students’ heads. He said it was to force kids to think deeper, but Sansa wasn’t so sure about that. She was quite surprised that he’d moved on from her shitty half-answer. She hoped it didn’t seem like she was getting any special favor from him.

She took down notes for the rest of the class period, only smiling a little bit every time Sandor’s gaze found her. Finally, the bell rang. Kids rushed out and Sansa took her time putting away her stuff. She looked up at Sandor -- grading papers at his desk -- and grinned.

He glanced up at her, red pen poised above a paper. “Can I help you, Ms. Stark?”

“Yeah. I wanted to discuss the ethics of draft dodging some more, sir.”  

“Oh, would you now.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes.” The door remained pointedly open.

“I have some papers to grade. You’ll have to wait. Do some homework or something,” he said gruffly.

Sansa grinned a secret little grin to herself and got out her math homework. She began to work in silence as Sandor graded essays. It was sweet how he wanted her to get her homework done. He cared about her! He showed it in his way. Eventually, she finished that and sat watching him grade. The rain pattered against the windows and the sky drew dark. The radiator clanked again and spat out a cloud of heat. It was all so soothing that she put her head against her desk and fell right to sleep.

A gentle hand shook Sansa awake. “C’mon, little bird, get up.” Sandor was smiling down at her, a sheaf of papers tucked under one arm. “Took an hour longer than I thought. Sorry. I’ll give you a ride home. Do you grab a cup of coffee or something?”

Sansa _glowed_ . Sandor never invited her to go places. Public places! They took separate cars everywhere. They kept it secret and professional. It was...it was just so _normal and sweet_. “Yes!!” she cried. She jumped up, wanting to hug him, but conscious of the open door. Sandor put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a sweet little shake. They left the school -- going two different ways -- and she met his car a few blocks away. It was a conspicuous black pickup with gigantic tires. The heat was on and the rain had turned to a gentle mist. Sandor drove through a Starbucks and picked her up a Pumpkin Spice latte and a lemon pound cake.

“You spoil me!” Sansa laughed.

Sandor grunted. He pulled into a parking spot in the darkest corner of the parking lot and leaned over to kiss her. Cupped her cheek. Something like a smile flickered at the edge of his jaw for a second, then melted into a look of concern. There was a look of concern on his face. “You’re too skinny, Sansa.”

She smirked. “I put on five pounds from all that steak you make! You only eat meat and carbs.”

He chuckled, then that look of consternation crossed his face again.

“You’re quiet today. Well, quieter than normal, I mean. Are you upset about something?”

Sandor shrugged. “Drink your latte.”

And so she did. It was sweet but sort of irritating sometimes, how he ordered her around. His concern for her was endearing. He showed his love in so many ways, some smaller than others, but he also sort of acted like her dad. She was sixteen, not five! “Sandor, we’ve talked about you treating me like a little kid.”

“Sorry, little bird.”

“If you’re fucking me, then maybe you shouldn’t treat me like a little girl. It’s creepy.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he grumbled.

“You’re doing it again...”

“Shit, I’m sorry. Look, darling, I’ve been thinking about your little sister, the freshman.”

“Which one?”

“Brown hair. The tomboy.” His fists were clenched.

“Which brown-haired tomboy?”

“ _The one fucking the twenty-five-year-old_!” he roared.

The comfortable quiet in the car was shattered. His shout almost seemed to echo in the pickup. Sansa looked down at her lap. “Arya,” she said quietly. “You’re thinking of Arya.”

“Yes, her,” he snapped. “Arya. She’s _fourteen_ and she’s with an adult man. It’s fucked up. It’s disturbing.”

Sansa looked out the windshield, watched the mist blur the neon lights of the Starbucks into halos.

“And,” Sandor continued in a rasp, “how am I any different than that smug foreign cunt who seduced her? I’m a grown man secretly fucking a little girl. Now don’t look at me like that. You’re only two years older than her. Now don’t think the law is what freaks me out. I don’t care for anyone’s morals, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what people think of me. But my own opinion matters to me. And yours,” he conceded. “But my own opinion is that I’m a God damned predator.” His fists were clenched. “And I couldn’t do that to you, darling. I don’t want to take advantage of you. You don’t deserve that.”

Sansa sighed. They’d had variations of this conversation plenty of times, but he’d never been so...vulnerable. She wanted to say something to alleviate all of his fears in one fell swoop. This couldn’t be thought of in one second. She put down her latte, squeezed Sandor’s hands. They were rough and calloused, twice the size of her own. “Sandor Clegane,” she began, “you said you only care about your opinion and mine. _My_ opinion is that you’re the love of my life. I’m young and there are so many things I don’t know. But I’m a hundred percent sure about this. I’ve never been more sure of anything else. I love you so much. You’ve got no faith in yourself. You’re good and kind. You’re honorable and funny and you _believe_ in me. You don’t just see Ned Stark’s daughter, a spoiled rich girl. But don’t...make me something I’m not. I’m not saving you from...yourself, or whatever. I’m just someone trying to keep things together, to get into a good college and then move away. And you’ll come with me!

You can help me pick what college I wanna go to. We’ll move across the country and you can do something you really love! I know teaching isn’t your first choice. And Life is gonna be perfect, we just have to wait for a couple of years. Sandor, please, please don’t think that you’re a bad person. What I think is that you've been through bad things, maybe even awful things, but you’re not a bad or awful person. So please just...don’t call yourself a predator.”            

He smiled, looked world-weary, thoughtful. “And what makes you think I’ve been through awful things, little bird?”

Sansa grew quiet. She quickly looked to the misty Starbucks lights, to the stormy sky, anywhere but that awful facial scarring.

“It’s the scars, eh?”

She nodded.

“ _I don’t talk about this_.”

“You...you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll tell you the damn story. If you’re going to be sticking around,  if we’re going to move across the damned country together, then you should know it.” Just like that, he’d switched from one disturbing subject to another. But...he’d never even delved into this subject. Holy crap.

“Alright,” she breathed.

 _Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Sandy. He was six years old, quiet and thoughtful. He had a big brother called Greggy and a baby sister who he loved dearly. She was only two years old, but he loved her more than he loved anyone else. Greggy, on the other hand, didn’t love the little girl or Sandy. Greggy was a furious boy, a terrible boy. An_ insane _boy. At nine, he had done heinous and psychotic things to all those around him. He had killed the family’s puppy by throwing it down the stairs for peeing on the floor. He had shaken a neighbor’s crying baby girl so hard once she’d nearly died because the noise annoyed him. He terrorized his siblings, of course. He tossed Sandy down the stairs like the puppy or beat him with a belt. His favorite way to hurt the baby sister was to push her down in her bath until she turned blue, and then let her up just before she expired. Because Greggy’s family was rich and powerful, his horrors were tolerated. And that was what they were: horrors. Living with Greggy was like a scary movie that never ended, a scary movie Sandy could never escape. He ran amok with no consequences and no discipline. No psychiatric help either,_

_One day, Greggy was out with a gang of neighborhood boys. They cruised the mansion-lined neighborhood, committing  their own little horrors wherever they could find them. Well, Sandy was excited to be alone with his baby sister.  He could play as he pleased, at least for a few hours. And the most important thing: he could play without fear for just a little bit. He and the baby sister were in front of a blazing fire, playing with toy knights and horses._

_Unfortunately, Sandy should have been afraid. He shouldn’t have relaxed. He didn’t notice that Greggy had come in until he was RIGHT there. Greggy was silent as a grave, but he was so angry he was shaking. The toy knights didn’t belong to Sandy and the baby sister. Greggy felt that they had committed a sin so vile, the only punishment worthy was something he’d never done before: killed a human. He picked up the baby sister by the back of her nice little dress and threw her into the cord of logs that had been waiting next to the fireplace. The clatter was so loud it was nearly deafening. The baby sister’s neck was facing the wrong way and she was silent._

_Greggy dragged Sandy over to the to the fireplace and shoved him face-first into the fire. At first, the little boy was silent. All he could process was pain, pain, pain. And then he screamed so loudly he brought maids running. Nothing seemed real when he felt his face start melting. The pain was so intense that he would have welcomed death, but it just wouldn’t come. He was awake and still alive. He screeched like a banshee. Sandy promised every god on earth that he would be a good boy if they would just stop the pain. It hurt so bad,. That was all he could think at a certain point, that it hurt so bad._

_“Pleaaaaaaaaase!” he wailed. “Please!!!”_

_It took three maids to pull Greggy off of Sandy. It took three more to restrain him as the ambulance came. It took two police officers to drag the little boy away as the kind ambulance men zipped the baby sister up in a black bag and loaded Sandy up on a gurney._

_After that, the biggest of Greggy’s horrors, the parents couldn’t hide it anymore. They sent him away to a nice place with special white jackets and special pink pills for children like him. They never spoke of him or the baby sister again. So Sandy grew up, alone and hideously scarred. His spirit eventually grew a scar as well, so he went off to war the second he turned eighteen. He fought for a while, even committed a few horrors himself, before deciding teaching about war was better than experiencing it firsthand. And so he taught for a few years. Built up a reputation as a hard-ass, and let nobody in._

_No one save for a red-headed beauty who was much too young for him._

“And that’s that,” he rasped. “You won’t find it in any news stories, mind you. My family covered it up well, buried it.”

Sansa wondered if this was what being _gutted_ felt like. Like someone had scraped out every good and happy thing inside you and replaced it with putrid horror. _Like Greggy’s horrors._ She felt tears brimming and quickly drove her knuckles into her eyes. She knew Sandor had a shadowy past, a truly fucked up one, but she had no idea he’d been through such hideous trauma. “Sorry” would never even begin to suffice as a response. “I love you,” she whispered, and lunged across the car to hug him. The gearshift buried itself in her side, but she could hardly feel it. She was overflowing with such great love for Sandor, made even stronger suddenly. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear, “thank you for trusting me with that.” Eventually, Sandor’s arms came to wrap around her. They stayed that way for some time.

The vibrating of Sansa’s phone broke them apart. She pulled away, answered it sheepishly. “Hi, Mom. I’m -- oh, sorry! I forgot to say I went to get coffee with Jeyne. I’ll be home soon.” She hung up and stared into Sandor’s dark eyes. She leaned back over, gently and deliberately placed a kiss on the damaged, puckered skin of his burn scar. “Sandor Clegane, please listen to me very closely,” she said softly. “Thank you for trusting me with that. I won’t dishonor you. I’m not gonna tell anyone. You’re not your past. You’re not your brother. You’re not the horrors. You’re my Sandor, the person I love more than anyone else. Thank you.” She was stunned to find his eyes wet.

“You’re making a compelling argument for sticking out this shit-hole teaching position, darling,” he said finally. “Two years?”

“Two years.”

“No gap year? No staying here to get a job? No surprise devotion to your family making you stay in this damn town?”

She laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. “No, the second I graduate high school, we can leave. We’ll move wherever you want. I’ll go to college.”

“What if your father cuts you off? You’ll have to get a real job like the rest of us. What if--”

Sansa cut him off with a kiss. Despite the horror churning in her gut, she felt more at peace than she had in a long, long time.


End file.
